like sand and stone

I believe many of the greatest gifts we receive are given to us when we least expect them. I have found that shock and overwhelming joy spreads across our faces when we stop looking for things to change our lives and we simply let things change our lives. When we finally let go and end our micromanaging do the greatest things fall in to place.

No pressure, no stress, no overlooking, no analyzing. Things are because they just are.

So many times over this past year, although I felt as if I had it all, I also felt as if I was trying too hard for happiness; gripping on to what I thought was so right only to find myself falling face first, smacking onto the cold, hard, unforgiving ground. This is not to say that good things come easy and stay with little to no effort, but happiness shouldn’t feel like a daily battle. For a long time, I was unsure why all of my efforts seemed to go to waste.

We shouldn’t feel like we are tricking ourselves into feeling a certain way and we shouldn’t feel as though we are putting on a facade; living a life on the outside that doesn’t match what we think within.

I’m sure many of you have experienced this before. It is instinct, especially in today’s society, to please others. While it is admirable to act with selflessness, this does not constitute being someone you are not. That is just deception and manipulation. Why we lie to ourselves and why we put on these masks of deception boils down to one simple answer: Once we are honest with ourselves, there is nowhere we can hide and our honesty doesn’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves. It seems that we feel trapped within, we are the only ones who know whether we decided to either sweep it under the rug or do something about it, and knowing that truth can sometimes feel like a bag of stone and sand.

The burdens we place on ourselves are destroyed once we give ourselves the permission to destroy them, so I beg you to do something about them.

Let the truth set you free, as they say. Stop keeping secrets from yourself. Let yourself feel what you feel and as I have said so many times, what will be will be. Let what feels unnatural fall away and end. You may disappoint others, you may damage relationships and you will more than likely lose the things you have been gripping onto so tightly. And that’s okay.

You can have the happiness and the freedom and the joy. You can have all that honesty promises.